Viral defamation
In the past 24 hours I've received four emails from random people asking me if I wrote a computer virus.
The emails have been relatively nonspecific (they've tended to assume I already know what they're talking about), but from what I can gather, lots of people's Windows boxes are suddenly putting up error boxes referring to an executable file with a variable name (all the reports I've had have called the file by some different jumble of random letters), which lists ‘Simon Tatham’ as its author, and apparently this file is infected with the ‘GoldG’ virus. I suppose all the people who have emailed me must have googled the listed author's name and found my website and email address. So I'll probably have to put up a notice on my front page saying it's nothing to do with me, if only because I anticipate the email load getting worse rather than better…
Supposing my correspondents' analysis is accurate, I wonder if the virus writer would be liable for some sort of defamation of my character? Or, I suppose, of the character of someone else with the same name –
(Not that I expect it'll be realistically possible to catch them, and defamation would doubtless be nowhere near the top of the list of stuff to haul them into court for if anyone did, but just out of curiosity.)
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To put my name in the Windows executable metadata, though, is more sinister; the only way I can think of for that to get there by accident is if they cloned-and-hacked some part of my build scripts, and really, if they're going to copy anyone's build system I doubt they'd pick mine – it's all Unixy and idiosyncratic and weird. So I'm more inclined to think that has to have been done deliberately.
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Have you made enemies in bad circles? :)
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*koff* Well, quite.
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